Dragon Soul is Chinese as has already been said. They do not participate in the EQEmu community at all and for that reason alone, I think that is why they will not get green server status. The green status has certain requirements that must be met for servers to get on it. Right now, we don't really have an easy way to get servers added to Preferred Status. Hopefully once the new changes coming to the LS and to the website, we will have better ways to get the Preferred list updated.
Once we are able to actually manage the preferred list, I am sure we will come up with some criteria that servers will have to meet in order to get on it. There may also be some sort of criteria to meet to keep from being removed from it.
Here is what I would personally suggest for required criteria to be a Preferred Server:
1. Average Uptime of 98% or higher
2. Average of 50+ players on during peak times
3. Server must be established for a minimum of 3 months
4. Server (or Server Management) must be at least somewhat involved in the community.
And here is what I would suggest for criteria to remove Preferred Server Access:
1. Server is down for 1+ months straight
2. Average Player count during peak times drops to 5 or less
3. Server Owner and/or Management gets banned from the EQEmu forums (permanently)
Of course, exceptions could be made in certain cases depending on the circumstances. If there was a good reason for a server being down more than 1 month, then there is no reason to remove it's Preferred status. Or if a server staff member went crazy and did something to get themselves banned which was out of the control of the server's owner, I don't think that would require the server's status to be removed. But, if multiple members of a server's team was causing issues and/or getting banned on the forums, I think it should definitely be considered to remove their server's status. Just another way to make sure people keep themselves in line and out of trouble.
And from what I have seen, Dragon Soul does get more players than others during the Chinese peak times, but PEQ and VZ/TZ still get at least as much as they do during western peak times, if not more.
Oh yeah, and a very large amount of the people on Chinese servers keep roleplaying or anon on at all times. So, it is very hard to tell for sure if they actually have those numbers or not, but I bet they are legit numbers.
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